The Lives of the Saints Volume 1 - St. Patrick's Basilica

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heavenly kingdom, the consideration of the divine judgments, and the
remembrance of his own sins. Persons that are lukewarm and slothful,
think of what they do or have done in penance to cancel their debts; but
David nourished perpetually in his breast a spirit of compunction, by
never thinking on the penance he had already done, but only on his debts
and miseries, and on what he had to do in order to blot out or deliver
himself from them. St. Chrysostom begs his friend's prayers that he
might be stirred up by the divine grace to weep perpetually under the
load of his spiritual evils, so as to escape everlasting torments.
The saint's three books, On Providence, are an exhortation to comfort,
patience, and resignation, addressed to Stagirius, a monk possessed by
an evil spirit. This Stagirius was a young nobleman, who had exasperated
his father by embracing a monastic state: but some time after fell into
lukewarmness, and was cruelly possessed by an evil spirit, and seized
with a dreadful melancholy, from which those who had received a power of
commanding evil spirits were not able to deliver him. St. Chrysostom
wrote these books soon after he was ordained deacon in 380. In the
first, he shows that all things are governed by divine providence, by
which even afflictions are always sent and directed for the good of the
elect. For any one to doubt of this is to turn infidel: and if we
believe it, what can we fear whatever tribulations befall us, and to
whatever height their waves ascend? Though the conduct of divine
providence, with regard to the just, be not uniform, it sends to none
any tribulations which are not for their good; when they are most heavy,
they are designed by God to prepare men for the greatest crowns.
Moreover, God is absolute master to dispose of us, as a potter of his
clay. What then have we to say? or how dare we presume to penetrate into
his holy counsels? The promise of God can never fail: this gives us an
absolute security of the highest advantages, mercy, and eternal glory,
which are designed us in our afflictions. St. Chrysostom represents to
Stagirius that his trials had cured his former vanity, anger, and sloth,
and it was owing to them that he now spent nights and days in fasting,
prayer, and reading. In the second book, he presses Stagirius
strenuously to reject all melancholy and gloomy thoughts, and not to be
uneasy either about his cure, or the grief his situation was likely to
give his father, but leaving the issue to God, with perfect resignation
to ask of him this mercy, resting in the entire confidence that whatever
God ordained would turn to his greatest advantage. In the third book, he
mentions to Stagirius several of his acquaintance, whose sufferings,
both in mind and body, were more grievous than those with which he was
afflicted. He bids him also pay a visit to the hospitals and prisons;
for he would there see that his cross was light in comparison of what
many others endured. {255} He tells him that sin ought to be to him the
only subject of grief; and that he ought to rejoice in sufferings as the
means by which his sins were to be expiated. A firm confidence in God, a